Unreal/Wwise RTPC and Attenuation

I describe the difficulties I had with figuring out RTPC's and how to set up attenuation in the Unreal engine. It is easier than it looks...once you know what is going on.
My website: www.timothyadan.com/

[@Chris-ge1et]

Very Helpful, Its nice to find a video that goes over the blueprints as well.

[@brassbgeek]

Chris wight I am happy to help! If you have any questions feel free to ask :-)

[@mikeellis7434]

Thanks for doing this, really helpful

[@brassbgeek]

Mike Ellis you are most welcome! I am happy it was helpful for you!

[@ppakielaflute]

thanks a lot so helpful , watching all of your tutorials about wwise and unreal !

[@brassbgeek]

I am glad these videos are helpful! If you have any questions feel free to let me know!

[@ppakielaflute]

@@brassbgeek actually I do thanks a lot : do you know if it s possible to decode MS recording in Wwise ? is there any plugin which does that?

[@brassbgeek]

@@ppakielaflute (I am making the assumption you are talking about mid/side recording. Correct me if Im wrong haha) I did a quick search around. It looks like you need to decode your ms recordings yourself in your DAW prior to importing to Wwise. There may be a way to do it in code but I have not done any coding in Wwise and I didnt see anything online about it.

[@ppakielaflute]

@@brassbgeek yes it is ! thanks a lot ! yeah then I guess i'm gonna have to go around like that... :)

[@phonomime]

7:01 it updates visually but you still have to generate your soundbanks in wwise and generate ak soundbanks again in ue4 so that all changes update properly in the engine

[@jbaudio11]

Awesome! Curious though, why didn't you set the RTPC up with an event tick? if you did would that not mean the RTPC would just need to be connected to the value as well?

[@brassbgeek]

Sorry for the late reply. I needed a moment to watch this video again to know what you were talking about. At this time, I was still figuring out the best way to assemble this code. And I guess more specifically, I could have forgone using the attenuation functions in Wwise and used RTPC's like I was doing before. I recall I was having some trouble with that and I am unsure why, and had I figured it out, it might have worked. But in the end, for what I was trying to accomplish (the attenuation of sounds from destroying the robots) using the attenuation zones was way more efficient, and was way more "plug 'n play" than what I was trying to do. In a future video when I am setting up wall speakers, I do what it is you say and update an rtpc on every tick in order to check and update distances between the player and all of the wall speakers on the map. You can view that here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/oZisXpmknNyrpMU. It's about 8 minutes in.

[@LukaReeson]

Great video! I'm trying to do a simple thing. I've made a sine wave in wwise, and gave it 2 RTPCs, one for frequency and one for gain. So, the closer you are, the higher the gain and frequency gets. Now, in UE4 I'm trying to setup the blueprints. How can I setup the blueprints, so when I move closer to the Ak event with my player, the higher the freq. and gain becomes? Thank you!

[@brassbgeek]

One of my later videos talks a little bit about this I think. However, what you will want is for the object containing the sound to check distance between itself and the player on every tick. On each tick, check the distance, and have it translate that distance to a float that you plug in to your RTPC. In wwise you will want a game parameter set up to use that float.

[@LukaReeson]

@@brassbgeek Yes, I've already made a game parameter called distance, which controls both rtpcs. Now, regarding the BP, I need to setup this inside my character BP right? EDIT: After setting up all this, I can disable the attenuation option in wwise?

[@brassbgeek]

@@LukaReeson You can make the blueprint in your character blueprint if you want. I think it depends on what your plan is for this sound. Personally, if the sound is not originating from the player character, I would make the blueprint come from the object the sound is attached to. attenuation in wwise only happens if you have an attenuation parameter set up and attached to the object. Thinking about it, that is another way you could set all of this up which may be easier than using an rtpc. Attenuations in wwise work very similarly to game parameters, and you can use them to modify different audio setting just like an rtpc would. I cant look right now because I am at work. Try it out if you can.

[@LukaReeson]

@@brassbgeek I've placed everything into the Cube BP, where the Ak component is also. It works. Here's the screen shot: imgur.com/a/2CiwNYj

[@LukaReeson]

@@brassbgeek I know that you can set the attenuation curve, but my "sound" was a pure data patch, where all the parameters were made in pure data.

[@alexisottier5815]

Hello. I just finished the Wwise 101 and 201 learning modules. I need to start learning Unreal. Where would you suggest I start?

[@brassbgeek]

Unreal has a few decent tutorials on their website that are good enough to at least get you familiar with the interface. Once you have that part down though, I feel their tutorials are very limited. Personally, I would just pick a VERY simple game type that you are interested in making, picking a project package that fits the bill (so the controls and camera are all set up for you already) and then diving right in. Programming using Unreal blueprints is pretty forgiving, the hardest part is knowing WHICH nodes to use (no need to worry about missing a colon anywhere). Once you run into something you aren't sure how to do, Google is your best friend. I have pretty much entirely put together the project in these tutorials using Google. Because of that, can get by pretty well without having to search for anything anymore because I learned how Unreal works by slowly building a project. Learning how Wwise works with Unreal is a little harder. There are some written tutorials available for it, but it requires a ton of experimentation to figure out everything else. That lack of easily-accessible information is why I put these tutorials together. Let me know if you have any other questions!

[@ssccaappeeggooaatt]

Hey man thanks! these are pretty cool. I'm still failing to see, though, how using wwise aids in the process of adding audio to your games yet though... it seems like, if i have enough knowledge about how to use the blueprint tool inside of UE4 to this level, wwise is just a making me take extra steps, when i could have just "coded" it inside of ue4... But i feel i have to be wrong on that, considering how many people are using it. can you explain to me at all? like there are attenuators inside of ue lol why would i go through the trouble with wwise to implement them?

[@brassbgeek]

There are a few reasons, and they will differ from one person to another. Firstly, you are right. In Unreal especially, you can do a lot of the things I mention straight in Unreal. However, there are a lot of tools that I don't even end up going over that are in Wwise that would be hard to replicate in Unreal. That being said, I plan on putting together a talk for a local game dev group talking about the differences between doing audio straight in Unreal as opposed to using Wwise. Hopefully that talk will be recorded so I can post it here. Now, even though you CAN do a lot of these things in Unreal, I find that even with a knowledge of blueprints, I find it to be clunky and not particularly user friendly (your mileage may vary though). Next, if you are a freelance audio professional, then only knowing how to use Unreal will greatly limit your ability to implement audio in other games, and Wwise is prooobably the most used audio middleware tool nowadays. The next point, which is also more personal preference than industry standard is keeping the programming and the audio implementation separate. For me, it is easier to understand what is going on when I am doing these two things separately, but understanding how they work together. Lastly, I put these videos together mostly because I wanted to know how audio implementation worked on the coding side of things, and Unreal was the most approachable way for me to learn that (and nobody else had videos on these subjects...which was a problem I chose to fix haha)

[@ssccaappeeggooaatt]

Jeez thanks for the quick reply! Lol Hm. Fair enough. I assume unity (i have almost no experience in it ) is much more code heavy? As in, no blueprinting, and i would just have to code in it? Id imagine wwise would be more helpful, there... Hm. I'm just now getting into implementing my own audio into games and i must admit im discouraged by how much im expected to know. I feel like i have to teach myself how to code before i can get a single thing done.

[@brassbgeek]

@@ssccaappeeggooaatt There are plugins that allow you to do visual scripting in Unity, but in general, yeah it is all coding in C# If you are a composer, and only a composer, you aren't necessarily expected to do the implementing yourself (that is what the sound designer does...usually). It can definitely be a lot though! Kind of a product of the times. And it is more or less an expectation, especially with smaller studios where they need their members to wear more hats. That is actually partly why things like Wwise exists. Learning Wwise is way easier to do than say, learning how to use every engine, AND the coding languages for them. Unfortunately, the cost to use the software can be fairly prohibitive for smaller companies. In addition, although it is easier to use the software than to learn how to code, you still need to know how coding works (kind of like, learning how to read...but not how to write) so that you can tell the coder where to put the Wwise events. there is a lot to think about! For you, I would suggest learning how to use Wwise, but definitely keep working on implementing with blueprints as well. Both skills are very important if you can maintain them.

[@ssccaappeeggooaatt]

@@brassbgeek yeah... thank you for the detailed reply. I think I'm just feeling the pressure of having to learn a million things at once, so much so, that I'm having a hard time being creative or having fun doing it lol maybe its just something i have to keep hacking at. Which, your videos will help a lot. Thank you! I couldn't imagine doing this years ago when even fewer resources were available

[@brassbgeek]

@@ssccaappeeggooaatt I totally understand. I am the same way STILL. It is just something you have to work through. I am glad these videos help! I put these together because there wasn't anything available that detailed the interaction between Unreal and Wwise. So once I figured it out, I started putting up these videos. I am glad so many people find these helpful. If you have any other questions, feel free to let me know!